Multiplex Ltd, a company contracted by Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) to collect street parking revenues has come under fire over allegations of brutality and mistreatment of Ugandans by its staff.
The matter was raised during today’s plenary sitting by Henry Kibalya, the Bugabula South MP, who noted that Multiplex staff have started harassing and chaining up vehicles they suspect of parking yet most times, the motorists are simply making a stopover to pick phone calls since it is illegal to drive while talking on phone in Uganda.
“Those people just drive park their pickup and chain their vehicles, even without talking to motorists. On several occasions, these guys don’t reason. These guys in Kampala didn’t go to the bush like others say, they were brought to Kampala,” said Kibalya.
Commenting on the matter, the State Minister for Kampala Capital City Affairs, Benny Namugwanya Bugembe revealed plans by Government to rein over the rowdy conduct of Multiplex staff.
Namugwanya confessed that she received a similar complaint from Nakapiripiriti Woman MP, Esther Anyakuni and thought that the Multiplex staff had improved on their conduct.
“The fact it is very rampant is the reason we are going to take it up. We are going to engage them and tell them what they should and not do. Can we be given two weeks to report back to Parliament?” said Namugwanya.
The complaints from MPs come at the time the report from the Auditor General pointed out that KCCA has failed to collect funds to a tune of Shs433.8M from Multiplex despite the street parking company collecting money daily.
The Authority amended the contract with Multiplex on August 9th 2017 with the contract amount payable revised from Shs140.3M to Shs375M and the parking fee was also revised from Shs400 to Shs1000 for the first two hours and Shs800 for extra 30minutes.
When KCCA conducted an audit of the Multiplex contract, the Authority discovered that Multiplex had breached the contract through late remittances of funds and failure to provide KCCA with access to the contractors’ management information system, continuous variation of parking spaces and failure to mark parking slots.
